Taxing Health Care Benefits: An All-Around Bad Idea
There’s noise now in Washington that policy makers are considering paying for health care reform, in part, by taxing health care benefits workers receive through employer-provided health coverage. Such an ill-conceived plan not only represents a big a tax hike for workers and their employers, but carries serious and hidden costs, according to a new study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
In “Not-So-Easy Money: Taxing Health Care Benefits Comes with Costs,” Elise Gould, EPI’s director of health care policy research, warns
we should proceed with extreme caution before moving to cap or eliminate this tax exclusion.
